


Arsene et moi

by Anonymous



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Hugs, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Arsene had him at “Vow to me.”





	Arsene et moi

**Author's Note:**

> Done for a request of ‘non-platonic arsene/akira fluff’ on the kink meme !!!

Arsene caught him at a funny time.

“Vow to me!” Arsene thundered, his call rattles the chains binding them.

Arsene caught him at a funny time, and made it funnier.

“Dog of society!” Arsene continued shouting, “leashed to Hell by the Devil’s irons!”

And by ‘funny’ Ren meant

.

He hadn’t understood a thing the terrifying red and black spectre screeched, yet something about it drew him in. 

It made his heart full. 

“Run wild on them!”

His legs charge before the words hit his brain proper. Above him the spectre crosses its arms and readies its claws. Unconsciously Ren mirrored the motion by crossing his own, pointing his dagger out as if it were one of Arsene’s massive claws.

Bizarre as their introduction had been, and brief as their time together was, Ren couldn’t

.

“So you’ll just want to stick him right there,” the guard said, slapping the frame of a massive guillotine. 

“Right… there?” Ren pointed at the neck holder under the blade.

In dream jail, two guillotines stood before the cell. In front of the guillotines were Arsene and the pixie Ren just met. Arsene’s heels didn’t click with his steps, given his dubious corporeality and the carpet on the floor, but Ren feels his steps somehow. More than his steps, Ren feels his stops.

This is the longest Arsene’s stopped since their introduction.

Ren stared at Arsene’s jabot. If he looked any higher his ribcage would crush his lungs.

“Inmate,” the guard snapped, aspirating on the ‘t’ so hard it echoed. 

Ren looked at the guard for all of five seconds before she brandished her cattle prod at him. The torrent of adrenaline from earlier had run dry, leaving him a husk. He bit the inside of his cheek.

“Does it have to be him?” Ren asked meekly, the matching looks he receives from the guards make him feel very small.

“We will meet again, perhaps,” Arsene interjected.

“No questions inmate!” The guard began to tug the rope attached to the blade when her sister raised a hand. 

“It does not have to be Arsene. Any personae of different arcanas will suffice.” The other guard twirled a bookmark between her fingers.

Ren scrunched his brows. “Arcana?”

“Ugh inmate this is why I said no questions.”

Arsene’s gaze hadn’t left him the whole time they’ve been here. At least it seemed that way.

The guard with the braid shook her head. “It does not have to be Arsene.”

“Okay,” Ren mumbled, turning away. “I’ll be back.” Taking one last look at Arsene, Ren made to charge back into castle maskless. Right before the door closed his mask reappeared.

“There they are!” shouted a guard coming round the bend.

Scarcely was he tearing off the guard’s mask before his own burst forth.

“And so we meet again.” 

Arsene’s voice was level, though his smile seemed to burn that much brighter.

“...Based off of the protagonist of Maurice Leblanc’s novels, Arsene Lupin,” Ren narrates then looks at the mass hunched over him. “Really?” he whispers, reverent.

“Of course!” Arsene boasts, droopy wings fluttering with enthusiasm.

“Wow!” Ren coos a giddy sound, however the next line in the mobile compendium saps the exuberance from his bones. “It says you help ‘law-abiding’ citizens..?”

“Arsene’s law,” the persona quips.

A giggle shakes his shoulders, chasing off the storm clouds. Ren does away with his phone and takes in Arsene: slightly cramped sitting with his back to the wall and his knees forming an arch over Ren. By some miracle his sheets remain intact under literal stiletto heels.

From sharp heels Ren’s gaze trails to the furnace of his face. A furnace whose coals burn bright in the day but less now. 

Ren wonders why that is.

Even with the full moon shining on him Arsene’s mask remains darker than night. The rest of him is a different matter.

Ren swings an arm over his face. Under the moonlight Arsene’s reds hurt to look at. While it’s not their first full moon, buying an eye mask keeps slipping his mind. However when droopy wings flop over his face, more effective than blackout drapes, buying a mask slips his mind again. 

“It’s not a bother?” Ren asks, pressing his warm face to cooler sheets.

“No,” Arsene replies. “Am I helping?” 

Ren wriggles closer to Arsene, holding the wing snug around his shoulders. “You’re helping.”

“You uncovered your face.”

Ren makes a petulant noise. “Good night Arsene.”

“Good night Ren.”

The chains disappear outside of the metaverse.

Chains summarily replaced by other restrictions: Verbal, legal, and later

“You should get ready for bed soon,” Morgana forces through a wide yawn that shows off all his little teeth.

Ren looks at his phone. “’s not that late.”

“I said soon,” Morgana says, then goes back to rest with a swish of his tail.

Then it’s quiet, in a way that makes Ren’s skin itch. ‘Business’ is technically happening downstairs but he doesn’t imagine the lone man playing sudoku in the corner would be much for background noise.

It’s soft, he feels it more than anything. Next to him Arsene lolls from side to side humming to no melody in particular. A thought strikes him.

“Do you want to watch it again?” he asks, fully prepared to dig through the pile of dvds in his school bag.

Arsene shakes his head and proceeds to hum a few more notes. 

Looking about the attic he catches sight of a large bowl in the junk pile. He’s not sure if this trick actually works but he does it anyway. In short order he finds the relevant item on his phone, pumps up the volume then drops it in the bowl.

And the music begins to play.

Arsene’s wings puff up and his face burns bright as he sits up. Mimicking the relevant scene in the film he stands up and performs a rather gauche twirl.

Before he knows it Ren’s walking over to Arsene and taking a claw in each hand as that’s the most he can hold on to. Like this he coaxes them both into something smoother and more serene. The actions are so base they could hardly be called dancing, the music sounds tinny coming out of his phone speaker, and sometimes one of their shoes squeak on the floor.

Then Arsene moves a hand to cradle his waist, drawing his hips forth as Ren droops back like a timelapse of a flower wilting. Briefly it strikes him as odd, that he can be playing with Arsene, that he can feel the fabric of Arsene’s clothes on his face. 

Ren glances at black feathers dusting the floor.

It makes Arsene less of a spectre.

“Oi kid about the key,” Sojiro calls out already halfway up the stairs before stopping abruptly.

“Oh.”

Ren near catches the vertigo he stands up so quick. “What’s up?” he asks, sounding as wobbly as he feels.

Sojiro coughs. “Key’s downstairs, you’re in charge of lock up.” 

He turns to leave but halts mid-turn. Sojiro opens his mouth and pointedly looks at Ren. Ultimately he keeps the issue to himself, making his way back down the stairs. Dimly Ren hears the footsteps trailing away.

“Ren,” Arsene prompts.

Over and over loops the interaction with his de-facto PO. It doesn’t seem like he’s in trouble but…

Gentle claws take his hand, the one squeezing the hell out of his elbow. They loosen his grip. Smooth out his crumpled sleeve. Then a familiar sensation, the rough stitching of Arsene’s vest against his cheek.

“Trouble?” Arsene asks quietly.

Ren shakes his head, half in answer, half in a fleeting attempt to scrub the heat off his face.

When the time comes, Sojiro is rather quick to accept Morgana into Leblanc.

The swish of straw scraping on wood floor fills the attic. Putting the broom aside, Ren grabs the pile of feathers and stuffs them into an old grocery bag.

“Do you need assistance?” Arsene asks from perch, the table by the stairs.

“No.”

“Is it a bother?”

“No.”

Ren leaves it, but the jitter Arsene’s wings tells him they’re not off this topic yet.

“Are you sure?”

“Not at all.” Ren says slowly, turning one feather between his fingers.

“It will sort itself,” Arsene says with the air of a deflating balloon as more feathers drift to the floor. “Eventually.”

His shoulders jerk, Arsene’s face burns bright as he claws at his back. A feeling familiar to Ren. Hauling his ass onto the table Ren touches the spot just out of Arsene’s reach and gasps.

“It’s so soft!”

Weaving his fingers through thick fluffy down makes his head feel light and fizzy. Beneath his hands a guttural purr comes from Arsene, rumbling the down between his fingers. Large clumps of down come away with his hands. 

A moment later he’s got Arsene ushered onto the bed with a bin bag to the side.  
Settling behind Arsene, Ren manages to behave for a second before temptation grips him. Helpless to the siren call of soft feathers Ren just

The fizzing in his head and heart evens out as Ren falls into a rhythm of combing through Arsene’s wings, dropping loose down and broken feathers in the bin bag. For a while the only sounds in the attic are the scritching of Ren stroking his wings and congratulatory noises as Arsene works through online French courses on the laptop. There’s also the occasional snuffle from Morgana beside them.

“Is this helping?” Ren asks tentatively. While feathers no longer fall off if Ren so much as breathes on them, Arsene’s wings don’t look any slimmer.

“It is helping.”

Ren hums, lazily sinking into the freshly preened plumage. The sea of feathers about him smother the words, which isn’t a problem with him pressed up against Arsene. What is a problem is the growing weight of his eyelids the longer he snuggles in Arsene’s plumage. 

“Gimme a moment,” he mumbles, bracing his his hands on Arsene’s back as he readies to totally definitely extract himself. 

Arsene’s palm dwarfs his back as he pulls Ren into a secure if awkwardly positioned embrace.

“One Big Bang Challenge please.” 

“Et une frites grosse!” Arsene adds.

“And a saturn fries.” Ren translates.

“And a big soda!” Morgana yells, wriggling his way out of Ren’s bag. 

“And a jupiter soda.” Ren parrots, holding Morgana down. 

“Anything else?”

Ren pauses. “And a shake.”

“Size?”

“Pluto?” Ren squeaks.

“And a mercury shake, got it.”

No additional requests come from his shadows. In the back they must be mass producing these monster burgers because their order comes out instantly. Ever the gentleman Arsene takes both trays as they head to a booth.

Immediately Arsene takes the carton of fries and holds it like he’s downing a drink. 

“Stop that,” Ren scolds, the memory of their last visit to Big Bang Burger too fresh for comfort. “Take your time, sip Mona’s soda if you need it.”

“Hey!”

Ren boops Morgana’s nose. “You never finish your soda, dunno why you keep asking for the big one.” 

“The cup looks cool!”

Fair enough. Ren nods and holds the burger to his mouth, only to be interrupted by loud grumbling. Never a dull moment with these two he swears. 

Arsene’s claws impede him from picking out and eating fries by the usual means. Their shape also keeps him from skewering the skinny fries.

Setting his burger down, Ren pats Arsene’s hand. “I’ll get a fork.” 

Getting a fork proves complicated. By now the broke student dinner rush is in full swing. It’d take all of two seconds for someone to get him a fork, but gutsy as Renis he isn’t gutsy enough to queue jump.

The cashier from before winces upon seeing him. “You know there’s a time limit right?”

“I know.”

“Well just so you know,” she sighs. “Here’s your fork.” 

“Thank you.” 

She shoos him away. “Go eat your burger!”

“Will do,” Ren chirps, heading back. Fork successfully gifted to Arsene Ren prepares himself mentally and physically to eat this burger. In the periphery Morgana yells something about how he’s ‘inhaling’ his burger and it’s ‘making him sick’. Ren tells him to tone it down so they don’t get kicked out. Again.

“Your French is getting really good,” Ren says on the rare burger break.

“Vraiment?” Arsene’s head whips up, despite the aid of the fork he’s still managed to get fry bits all over his face and cravat.

“Yeah,” Ren beams before polishing off the last few bites. Heck if he knows, but Arsene seems to wield it more frequently and with confidence. That’s gotta count for something. 

Arsene and Morgana are still working on their orders. Either they’re slow or he’s fast. While he’s folding up the burger wrapper the cashier marches up to their booth.

“Congratulations on completing rank two of the Big Bang Burger Challenge!”

Ren tilts his head. “Rank two?”

The cashier drops her hands. “It’s a bigger burger.”

Ren frowns. The burger was bigger?

“And it is our honour to bestow upon you the prestigious First Mate Badge!” The cashier slaps the badge onto the table. “Thank you for visiting Big Bang Burger today! Stay safe out there cosmonaut.”

“You too.” Ren answers, still caught up on the burger. It really didn’t seem bigger.

“Ren.” Arsene says, voice soft and reverent. “The lady has awarded you a rosette for your abilities.”

Ren bites the inside of his cheek. In lieu of responding Ren grabs his shake and stands up. “Let’s go. People are waiting for seats.” 

“How honourable the first mate is!” Arsene exclaims then stands up way too fast. The ‘embarrass Ren power hour’ is cut short fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds by gagging noises from Arsene.

“Oh no!” Ren gasps. Setting his shake down he leaps onto an empty chair and winds his arms around Arsene’s waist. Hopefully this time they would be kicked out _after_ he successfully heimlich’d Arsene.

“Oi, kid.”

Setting down the knife Ren looks at Sojiro, who seems determined to avoid eye contact. “If you wanna, uh.” 

Sojiro sets the newspaper down and points to the gramophone, “you’re free to use that when the shop’s closed. So you don’t have to put your phone in a bowl, should be some records upstairs too.” 

Sojiro crosses his arms and this time he does look at Ren. “As long as _you’re_ the one carrying it up the stairs. I know you’re pushing dishes onto the big guy and he can be a real butterfingers.”

Ren would blow a raspberry if there wasn’t shards of plate sitting at the top of the bin.

Eventually Sojiro heads home for the evening, the resulting silence is suffocating. The bang of the knife against the chopping board echoes through the empty cafe and stings his ears, punctuated by the equally sonorous ticking of the clock. 

Putting those out of his mind leaves him alone with

_‘I am thou, thou art I.’_

That was among the first things he’d said to Ren. At first blush it made enough sense. Arsene is his persona, the manifestation of his rebellion born of the sea of his soul. On subsequent blushes that makes no sense at all. They’ve had their disagreements, if they shared thoughts Ren doesn’t think their conversations would be nearly as fun.

The manifestation of his rebellion. Born of the sea of his soul.

Does Arsene know what’s in his soul? His heart? Ren balls his hands.

Does Arsene know?

And… if Ren put Arsene in the know, and there was a disagreement, would it make things awkward?

Ren digs his palms into his eye sockets and breathes in. If things became awkward between him and Arsene he doesn’t know what he’d do. 

The more space it takes in his heart the more noticeable it’ll be. 

“Ah.” 

“Ren are you okay!?” 

Arsene’s wings tremble, raining feathers all over the floor. His claws clack loudly on the counter. There’s a loud screech as Arsene stands up and rushes to his side. 

“If only I could cast dia!” Arsene thunders, his face glowing with the inflection of his words.

Ren waves his okay hand. “Just need a bandaid.” 

“A band... aid?” Arsene’s shaking stops.

“Um,” Ren hums, pawing at the top of the fridge for the first aid kit. “Sorta like dia.”

“Ohhhh. You need this?” Arsene grabs the kit off the fridge and hands it to Ren.

Ren can’t help a cheeky “merci!”, met with a flutter of the wings from his persona who otherwise remains tense.

Arsene watches rapt as Ren daubs some ointment on the cut then loosely wraps the bandage around his finger. 

“It bleeds through!” Arsene booms not a second later, caging Ren closer to the counter.

“It’ll stop.” Ren moves his hand away, only for Arsene to grab his wrist. “Things are slower out here.” He tugs his arm but Arsene doesn’t let go. In fact Arsene leans in so their faces are level. 

With a quiet sigh Ren lets his eyes drift shut, tilts his chin up, and then

It’s not the clandestine svelte brush of lips Ren envisioned. It’s too needy, too much residual lip balm, too much nose bumping and strange noises. Not enough gentlemanly grace or whatever model Arsene embodies. 

And yet.

Large hands settle on him. One flat over his navel, the other heavy across his chest. Palm his sternum, long claws his ribs, ready to catch his heart when it bursts. 

It’s hardly anything, yet with each warm touch Ren can’t help the breath leaving him, can’t help his eyes closing and the overwhelming urge to fall.

Let go.

Up goes the hand on his chest. Spindly black claws curl over his throat, one trails up the back of neck. Pointy tip digging in enough to sting and it’s nigh pavlovian how he melts against Arsene.

On another inhale the lines come back into focus and Ren’s heart jolts. His hands fumble at Arsene’s, the apology already formed if not out, and when his fingers touch Arsene’s claws he’s taken back. For a moment chains bind his arms again, cruel hands on his head and arms keep him quiet and unseeing. 

It passes. No more chains or hands, only warm pressure. The apology on his lips dies.

The claws on his neck trail up and up and run over a tender spot at the top of his head, scattering all his thoughts. He automatically presses against sharp points for more, more more-

They keep trailing. Between his eyes, down his nose.

He playfully snaps at a claw dancing at the corner of his lips but it ducks away. Settling behind his jaw, under his ear, coaxing a soft rumble low in Ren’s throat. Until they’re dipping under the high neck of his collar and

“We should go upstairs.”

He takes a moment to get his bearings, centre himself, when another thought strikes him and he looks to the gramophone. “Lemme grab that.”

“But your hand!” Arsene clutches the arm of his injured hand.

Eventually they reach a compromise. Ren carefully holds the gramophone, and Arsene carefully holds Ren up the stairs. Setting the gramophone down he whispers a quick prayer for Sojiro’s music taste. An unneeded prayer as all the records are pretty solid mood setters.

It kinda has him wondering… nevermind.

It’s an electric gramophone, which further dispels some notions he had about Sojiro, but the process of setting it up is much the same as its analog counterpart. In a fluid motion he drops the needle and flips the switch before giving Arsene his full attention.

The persona seems all but hypnotised by the spinning record. Ren wants to laugh. Ren wants to pout. 

“Arsene.”

Standing on his tippy toes he grabs Arsene’s chain and tugs him in for another kiss. And another. And another. Each kiss burns more of him away, a flame that starves for his air.

Ren smiles against Arsene’s face, he’d always been prone to playing with fire.

Ren wakes to a warm weight square on his ass, effectively rendering him a Ren sandwich. 

“Ugh stop moving.” Morgana groans.

“Do you have to sleep there?”

“It’s big and soft,” Morgana says with a yawn. “Or was soft until you tensed up,” he shoves a paw at Ren’s lower back. “Stobbit.”

Ren takes quick stock of dying embers behind Arsene’s mask. “You’re not mad?”

Morgana stamps harder. “About you squirming around? Yeah I am.”

“No not that,” Ren trails off. About…

“Just pretend to be asleep for a few more minutes or something, _please_.”

Which is rich coming from Morgana as he’s usually all about Ren getting a head start on the day. Ren’s about to tease him for it when one of Arsene’s wings comes to rest over Morgana and thus Ren. 

Everything is dark again leaving him very cognisant of the cat rumbling like a small vehicle on his back, and the furnace under him, its living rhythm a slow but steady roar.

Ren settles against the hearth he’s given his vow to, his heart a bellows dedicated its warmth alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Ive been heart eyes for this prompt ever since the smash dlc came out


End file.
